Down for the count

with a wretched cold, started a week ago as hay fever then morphed into evil bronchitis-plus. Lost precious work time. Breathed germs on various people. Still feel sick. Couldn't read anything but the lightest of light reading: two mysteries by Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night (which I seriously must have read so many times before that I've practically memorized the opening pages, and which gave me my first major glimpse at age 11 or 12 into the academic life I wanted to have when I grew up) and sequel Busman's Honeymoon; and Diana Wynne Jones, Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin, also both already excessively re-read. But this brings me to my main point: why don't more "literary" novels have sequels? Don't you often want another book to take on the same characters? Yes, of course there is something that comes from nineteenth-century realism and prestige and everything that says fancy books should be a self-enclosed universe. But I would love to read a sequel to Kavalier & Clay or The Time of Our Singing.